Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

“Oh Lord of the Universe, maker of vine from which we drink, maker of wheat for the bread we eat, we give you thanks that we are home safe at last, and keep us from evil, Amen.”

If there was anyone else in the town, we didn’t know it. Old Sarah said for us to have patience, and have faith in the Lord.

After the supper, Cleopas came to Aunt Sarah and took her in his arms, and kissed her hands, and she kissed his forehead.

“And what do you know,” he asked, “about gods and goddesses who drink nectar and eat ambrosia?” he asked her. There was a little laughter from the other men.

“Look in the boxes of scrolls when you have the time for it, curious one,” she said. “You think my father had no room there for Homer? Or for Plato? You think he never read to his children in the evening? Don’t think you know what I know.”

The other men came to Old Sarah one by one and kissed her hands and she received them.

It struck me that it was very late, their coming to her, and that none of them said a word of thanks to her for what she had done.

When my mother put me to bed in the room with the men, I asked her about this, how it was they didn’t offer their thanks. She frowned and shook her head and said in a whisper that I mustn’t speak of it. A woman had saved the lives of the men.

“But she has many gray hairs,” I said.

“She’s still a woman,” my mother said, “and they are men.”

In the night, I woke up crying.

For a time I didn’t know where we were. I couldn’t see anything. My mother was near me and so was my aunt Mary, and Bruria was talking to me. I came to know we were home. My teeth were chattering, but I wasn’t cold. James came up close to me and told me that the Romans had moved on. They’d left soldiers to keep guard on the crucified, and put down any last bit of rebellion, but most of them had moved on.

He sounded very sure and strong. He lay beside me with his arm over me.

I wished it was daylight. I felt my fear would go away if it was daylight. I began to cry again.

My mother softly sang to me: “It is the Lord who gives salvation even unto Kings, it is the Lord who delivered even David from the hateful sword; Let our sons grow as plants grow, and let our daughters be cornerstones, polished as if they were the cornerstones of the palace …happy is that people, whose God is the Lord.”

I drifted in dreams.

When daylight came I saw it under the door to the courtyard. The women were already up. I went out before anyone could stop me. The air was sweet and almost warm.

James came fast after me, and I ran up the ladder to the roof, and up the next ladder to the roof above that. We crawled to the edge and looked towards Sepphoris.

It was so far away that all I could see were the crosses, and it was as James had said. I couldn’t count them. People were moving around the crosses. Others were coming and going on the road as people do and I saw wagons, and donkeys. The fire was out, though there was still smoke streaming up to the sky, and there was plenty of the city that wasn’t burnt. But again it was hard to see.

To my right the houses of Nazareth went up the hill one against another, and to the left they went down. No one was on all the roofs we saw, but we could see mats and blankets here and there and all around the village the green fields and the forests of thick trees. So many trees.

When I came down, Joseph was waiting, and he took us both sternly by the shoulders and said, “Who told you that you could do this? Don’t you go up there again.”

We nodded. James blushed, and there passed between them a quick look, James ashamed, and Joseph forgiving him.

“It was my doing,” I said. “I ran up.”

“And you won’t do it again,” said Joseph, “because what if they come back?”

I nodded.

“What did you see?” Joseph asked.

“It’s quiet,” said James. “They’re finished. People are taking away the bodies of the dead. There are villages that were burnt.”

“I didn’t see the villages,” I said.

“They were out there, little places, near the city.”

Joseph shook his head, and took James with him to work.

Old Sarah sat, bundled up against the open air, under the old bones of the fig tree. The leaves were big and green. She was at her sewing, but mostly pulling out threads.

An old man came to the gate, nodded and moved on. Women passed with their baskets, and I heard children.

I stood listening, and I heard the cooing of the pigeons again, and I thought I could hear the leaves moving, and a woman singing.

“What are you dreaming?” asked Old Sarah.

In Alexandria there had been people—people everywhere, and always we were with each other, crowded and eating and working and playing and sleeping crowded together, and there had never been this …this quiet.

I wanted to sing. I thought of my uncle Cleopas and the way that he would sing all of a sudden. And I wanted to sing.

A little boy came to the entrance to the courtyard, and then another behind him, and I said to them,

“Come in.”

“Yes, you come in now, Toda, and you too, Mattai,” said Old Sarah. “This is my nephew, Jesus bar Joseph.”

At once Little Symeon came out from behind the curtain of the doorway, and so did Little Judas.

“I can run to the top of the hill faster than anyone,” said the boy Mattai.

Toda told him they had to get back to work.

“The market’s open again. Have you seen the market?” Toda asked.

“No, where is it?”

“You go,” said Old Sarah.

The town was coming back to life.

Chapter 13

The marketplace was only a gathering at the foot of the hill. People threw up canopies and laid their goods out on blankets, and women sold the vegetables from their gardens that they didn’t need. A peddler was there with some goods, including some silver plate. And another peddler had linen to sell, and lots of dyed yarn, as well as trinkets of all kinds, and some cups of limestone and even one or two small bound books.

I met more friends, but the mothers were keeping the children close. And James came to look for me quick enough.

The town grew busier and busier. Women passed on their way to market, and old men and women were out in the courtyards, and some men were coming and going from the fields.

But people were worried, and they spoke of the woes of Sepphoris in hushed voices, and no one was at ease except perhaps those of us who were little and could forget about it for a little while.

When I got back home, I saw new children in the courtyard come to play with Little Salome and the others, but most of the family was hard at work.

It was our job to take stock of the repairs that had to be done, and we climbed up first to see the roof of mud and branches, and where the holes had to be fixed, and then to pass through each room to be sure of its mud plaster, and how the floors on the upper stories were holding up. There was much white painting to be done where the plaster had gone gray or black. And on the walls of the lower rooms in the flood of light from the open doorways, I could see the traces of fine painted borders in different colors and designs that had once been very beautiful, no doubt.

Joseph and Cleopas talked about repainting all of this, and I’d seen them do this work in Alexandria with great speed. I wasn’t old enough to do it, to keep a long strip of green border perfectly straight.

But there was much I could do with them now.

The cribs in the stable needed repairing, and the frames of the lattices for the vines on the front of the courtyard had to be rebuilt as I’d seen when I first came.

But what most surprised me was to discover the huge cisterns which the house had, both of them holding much rainwater even though they needed to be patched.